AMADOU & MARIAM: ‘THE MAGIC COUPLE’

It’s always been urban legend that handicapped people compensate for it in other ways, sharpening their other capabilities even to the point of developing a ‘sixth sense’ to replace the one they lost. There’s no hard evidence to support that hunch, of course, but you could almost believe it sometimes, especially if there were such a thing as a ‘musical sense.’ Amadou & Mariam position themselves in that great tradition, along with Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder and Jose’ Feliciano, of blind musicians who’ve achieved great things in the field of popular music, not bad considering they’re from one of the poorest countries in the world. If it were just one of them it would be incredible enough, but the two of them together, partners in art and life, is a wonder to behold. They must be doing something right, since they’re currently opening for Coldplay in major venues around the US. First they take Bamako… then they take LA.

Amadou & Mariam’s current tour with Coldplay is the biggest thing to happen in world music since Tinariwen opened for the Rolling Stones a couple years ago in the UK. This is a big deal and worth noting. Little by little world music is evolving beyond its curio status as something merely ‘other.’ Folk festivals especially are getting hip that there’s nothing ‘folksier’, nor cooler, than these representatives of the world’s great musical traditions. Not coincidentally I suspect, Wrasse Records has released a new album, Magic Couple, featuring the best songs from Amadou & Mariam’s first three albums. Their current dates with Coldplay are not their first brush with fame of course. A previous album Dimanche en Bamako was essentially a collaboration with legendary European pop-rocker Manu Chao, featuring the hit ditty ‘Senegal Fast Food’ in which Amadou & Mariam served as little more than backup singers for ‘producer’ Manuel. Hey, work’s work. Anyway there’s no such silliness here. This is the real stuff, made in Africa, before they found success in Europe, and now America.

At least half of these songs are sung in local Mali dialect. And if some of the French language songs on Magic Couple seem a bit clichéd (“Thinking of You,” “That’s the Way it Is,” “Everybody Has Their Own Problems,” “Such is Life,” etc.), that’s because they refer to the universal experiences common to us all. What do you sing about anyway, or even think about, when your main source of sensory input has been taken away from you? As adept as Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder are and were at evoking the visual concepts of redness and loveliness or whatever, the mind’s eye can only reproduce so much from memory, though that process of simulation and emulation is certainly interesting and notable. But Amadou and Mariam stick to the basics, the broad themes, more or less equally divided between rockers and ballads. “A Chacun Son Problemes” continues “a chacun son affaires… a chacun sa vie” (“Everybody has their own problems… their own business… their own life”), and that’s one of the heavier themes.

More typically the songs are self-referential, celebrating the act of song itself, particularly in the lively rocker “C’est la Vie” singing “chantez ensemble, chantez ensemble” (“sing it all together”) or “Chantez-chantez”… “jouez-jouez… dansez-dansez” (“Sing… play… dance”) only occasionally invoking higher political ideals- “Liberte’ pour toute le monde!” (“Freedom for everyone!”). Amadou handles the lion’s share of the vocal chores on these rockers, his being the stronger voice, Mariam carrying a larger load on the ballads and love songs. Particularly charming are her vocals on “Toubala Kono” and “Djagneba.” If ‘stickiness,’ the inability to get a song out of one’s head, is the criterion of judgement, then maybe the best song overall is a ballad that Amadou sings, “Je Pense a Toi” (“I’m Thinking of You”), self-explanatory. That’s the one that got them on the map of Africa years ago. They also celebrate the ethnic diversity of their country Mali, as in “Poulu/Les Peuls” (Fulanis), though their song “Bozos” didn’t make this edition. I think I know some people in that tribe.

The album’s title says it all. Amadou & Mariam truly are a Magic Couple. They have overcome a curse and made it a blessing, and that shows through in every song, the joy and fragility of it all. You can still catch them with Coldplay this week in San Diego or LA or next week in Dallas or Houston or… you can catch them on their own tour later this year (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in SF? Yeah…), or… you can buy the album, or… you can buy all their albums, or… all of the above. ‘None of the above’ is not an option.

4th and 10… and Surrounded by Mali’s Middlemen

Fortunately for me, Timbuktu is just a metaphor, right? It represents the ends of the Earth, right? We all knew that somehow somewhere deep down in our subconscious, right? I mean, if I ever actually got there, then what would I call the blog then? So the moral of the story, of course, is “be careful what you ask for; you might just get it.” Now that’s appropriately vague enough to fit most circumstances, and I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but certainly Mali gets raves as ‘the real thing’ so I guess that’s what I wanted, I being a strict aficionado of authenticity in all its multifarious manifestations. Oh, it’s real all right. We hear much of ‘developing countries’ and ‘under-developed countries’ and ‘least-developed countries.’ That last category must be Mali’s. There’s nothing there; okay, there’s hardly anything, hotels, stores, restaurants, anything, and what there is, is hard to find. Well, nyaa nyaa, bitch bitch, precious little American fell down and can’t find his beer; what a pity! No, I’m serious; there’s nothing, and that’s not the worst of it! To find what there is, you almost have to resort to the free-lance guides that prey on you while you pray to them. This is anathema to independent travel, to resort to the hybrid multi-cultis that comprise the interface between tourist and foreign country. Feeling sorry for me yet? No, it gets even worse. It’s expensive, even exorbitant! This is definitely anathema to independent (read ‘budget’) travel. When the cheapest backpacker hovel is $25 a night, then we got a problem. They never heard of credit cards of course, and ATM’s are not ubiquitous.

Travel writers are not doing their job here. Maybe when they specialize in a country they become accustomed to it and lose their objectivity. I’ve been to over fifty countries and researched this trip extensively and no one ever mentioned the high prices, only that Timbuktu seemed high. If that means Bamako is comparatively low, then maybe I’ll pass on Timbuktu. They also said there isn’t much in Timbuktu! That’s what I’d say about Bamako. Let me clarify this. A fifty dollar hotel in the US is better than a fifty dollar hotel in Mali, by far. That the fifty bucks is easier to come by in the US should go without saying. Lonely Planet is in on the collusion, too. They don’t tell you actual prices, unless you’re actually booking through them, only rating them $, $$, or $$$. Well, that doesn’t mean much when a $ in Mali is $25 and a $ in Chiang Mai is $5. I’m thinking of filing a lawsuit. Lives are at stake here, not just psyches. Sure, we love that roller-coaster empty feeling in the pit of our stomach, but the epiphany is in transcending it. Much has been written of the ‘instant illiteracy’ you feel upon first arriving in China. Mali’s worse, and it’s not about the letters. Though I haven’t mastered French, I can certainly get by, especially if reading. The first Phoenicians arrived close to where I’m sitting right now more than two thousand years ago and conducted trade by mute barter. Many mixed couples in Thailand do this as a way of life. It works. That’s not the problem. The problem is the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness you get when confronted with untenable situations. There’s next to nothing there, and what little there is, is expensive and poorly organized. So what do you do? I did the unthinkable. I played parasite-host with a free-lance guide, even staying in his hovel apartment with his so-called ‘family’, while buying myself some time to re-think my plans. That was an eye-opener to be sure, the Mali equivalent of a slum project, full of color, to say the least. Well, Mohamed and I parted company a bit not so amicably after a couple days, he scamming up my rent steadily, but still I bought a little time and some vivid images for the mind’s eye, so basically a successful maneuver. Never say never.

How can a place so poverty-stricken and undeveloped be so expensive? What’s wrong with Mali is what’s wrong with Africa, just more so. We Americans chastise ‘developers’ with our choicest curses, preferring to save a solitary tree than stoop to WalMart’s central dogma. In Bamako I dreamed of Whataburgers and greasy chicken legs when confronted with the choice of very expensive restaurant food or street food of an uncertain sanitary nature. That’s the problem in Africa, that huge gap between rich and poor, no entrepreneurial middle class. They could use some Chinese businessmen here, and I suspect they’re on the way, given China’s infrastructure investments on the continent. The Lebanese only go so far, doing what those same ancestor Phoenicians were doing two thousand years ago. They’re in Thailand, too. But Chinese represent a modern production capacity and global distribution capability unlike anything the world has seen since Britain’s head-start on the Industrial Revolution and America’s mop-up of WWII. Chinese study their history and learn their lessons well while just doing what comes naturally in monopolizing trade and working within extensive family-based networks. What Zheng He could never accomplish six hundred years ago with his ‘treasure fleets’ of Chinese sailing junks, modern Chinese conquer every day with their container loads of inexpensive Chinese junk. Of course, while a ‘conspiracy person’ might see a pattern to all of this, in actuality it’s mostly just a situation of individual Chinese trying to feed their families and willing to give up citizenship in order to do so. After all overseas Chinese still count and are counted by a country that worships its blood line.

So why is Africa so far behind in the first place? Certainly business acumen is not the same as rocket science, basically just common sense- buy low and sell high, but old habits and fears are hard to break, and complex organization can be difficult to establish. Is it simply a trait of ‘negritude’, or of Africa, or maybe of French cultural overlay? I suspect ‘all of the above.’ After all, the closest out-of-Africa analogy in my experience would be to Haiti, similarly impoverished, over-priced, and very interesting, ultimately. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say “there is no there there.” That’s Oakland. There’s plenty there in Mali; it’s just not economic development. It’s music, and tradition. Street names are replete with names like Diabate, Keita, and Toure’. You can watch Amadou and Mariam on the evening news and hear Salif Keita coming from cassettes (yes, cassettes). Malian musicians are a regular feature at music festivals world-wide and no less respected back home. I stopped to rest from a long walk at the same time and place as an itinerant cassette vendor, and a magic hour transpired, just listening to Malian pop music blaring from a car battery-powered ghetto blaster. I watched the top 15 music video Friday countdown, and I’d never heard of any of the musicians, but it was all good. Comparisons could be made to ‘60’s Cambodia, where an entire era of music was bigger and better than any of its individual stars, and widespread poverty was not an overriding obstacle to cultural excellence. The comparison is interesting, because modern Cambodia is a beehive of industry and development, quickly moving out of the ranks of ‘least-developed countries’ with the help of its neighbors and cultural cousins Japan, China, and Thailand, etc. They’ll expect a return on their investment of course. This is old news, as most of Southeast Asia would be developmentally retarded without their Chinese immigrant merchant class well established. Who’s going to help Mali, and some thirty other sub-Saharan African countries? Do they really need it? Do they even want it?

JUSTIN ADAMS AND JULDEH CAMARA- ‘TELL NO LIES’

This collaboration may not be first Anglo/African supergroup- Ali Farka Toure and Ry cooder did that long ago, not to mention Paul Simon and Ladysmith. Nor is it the first such longer–term collaboration to bear fruit and prove itself repeatedly on tour- Afrissippi has been playing and touring together for at least several years now. But they may very well be the first Anglo/African group to create an entirely new sound in the process. Now I’m not talking about Africans playing in US/UK bands or vice-versa; I’m talking about true collaborations, musicians meeting on equal terms. So what do you get when you cross West African griot music with white boy blues/rock? Think about that one for a minute. But whereas Ry Cooder respectfully stayed within his host’s West African folk idiom, so does Afrissippi stay well within the boundaries of Delta blues, albeit sung in Fulani, same as Juldeh Camara (Ali Farka also sang in Fulani, in addition to his native Sonrai). Justin Adams’ and Juldeh Camara’s music is not so easy to define. That’s good, for while the influences are many and varied, the result is unique and special. Look out, Tinariwen. You’ve got competition.

The album ‘Tell No Lies’ is a wonder in more ways than one, not the least of which is the thematic progression from start to finish. Listening to any one individual song doesn’t quite give the full picture. The album starts with the kick-ass blues rocker ‘Sahara’ which is basically a pre-flight warning to “buckle your seat belts.” Don’t be fooled by the title. This is Justin’s song, with Juldeh providing vocals, screaming wailing cut-me-loose vocals. Juldeh is not Saharan anyway. Fulanis are traditionally from the Sahel, that broad grassy plain just south of the Sahara that seamlessly segues into sand to the north, and into woodlands to the south, including Juldeh Camara’s home in the Gambia. And just as Tuaregs symbolize the Sahara, Fulanis symbolize the Sahel, traditionally ranging far and wide across borders, wherever there is enough grass to support their cows. Not infrequently do they cross paths with Tuaregs at the desert’s borders, sharing salt and trading southern goods for northern ones.

Just as the desert gradually becomes grassland before becoming forest, so does the music of Adams and Camara pass through many and varied landscapes to get where it’s going, essentially from north to south. If the opening song references Adams’ chief employer Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, subsequent offerings run the gamut of influences from Muddy Waters’ muddy vocals in ‘Fulani Coochie Man’ to Papa John Creach’s screaching fiddle in ‘Madame Mariana’ to Duane Allman’s soul-full slide guitar in ‘Nangu Sobeh’ to Ali Farka Toure’s folk chants in ‘Chukaloy Daloy’. Finally Camara returns home, literally, with the albums’s closing song ‘Futa Jalo’, sung in full griot style, and expressing a longing for Futa Jalo (Fouta Djallon), the homeland for Fulanis from which most emigration originally took place. This is griot music to make any Diabate brother proud. For those of you who don’t know, griot is a hereditary caste of musicians unique to West Africa. For those of you who DO know, “Big deal,” maybe you say. “Everybody and his freakin’ brother from West Africa is a griot. There are more griots on the world music scene than there are Tuaregs.” Labels are meaningless, true; the proof is in the listening.

Juldeh Camara is more than a mild-mannered balladeering griot humbly carrying on the tradition. He is one kick-ass player of the riti, a one-string ‘spike fiddle’ indigenous to the region. How he can get so much sound out of a single string is beyond my knowledge, but I know I haven’t heard such git/fiddle arrangements since Papa John Creach and Jorma Kaukonen traded licks way back when. So what do you get when you cross West African traditional music with white boy blues anyway? Would you believe Bo Diddley? That’s definitely the sound being channeled for what is arguably ‘the hit’ from this album, ‘Kele Kele (No Passport, No Visa)’, a song about the frustrations and joyful homecomings of illegal immigration. One more sampling, maybe you’re thinking, so where’s this unique hybrid sound that I talked about? Listen to ‘Banjul Girl’. These are pop hooks that defy categorization, maybe some hint of Amadou and Mariam, a little Tinariwen, a little Toumani Diabate, but with something else, some undefinable something.

That undefinable something is Justin Adams’ scorching guitar, setting a new standard for Afro-Pop that is not likely to be matched any time soon. As somebody realized long ago, that if you took Latino-pop and added virtuoso guitar, you’d really have something, i.e. Santana, so you can extrapolate the case to Africa. Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara have just raised the bar for African music. This is more than just a fusion of African and Anglo folk/roots/rock music, this is a fusion of the Saharan desert and Nigerian jungle meeting somewhere in the grassy Sahel. This is a fusion of electric and acoustic, deciding to join together instead of maintaining an icy distance. This is a fusion of Africa, both homeboy and émigré, re-uniting in time if not space, in concept and concert. The only thing better than listening to this album would have been to see parts of it performed live at Dubai WOMAD a few months ago with guest Robert Plant stalking the stage and adding his significant two bits (and I wasn’t even a Robert Plant fan until his collaborations with Adams and Allison, so there you go). Now I guess I’ll have to go back and re-listen to Justin and Juldeh’s first collaboration, and see what I missed. I can’t wait. I’ll confess, though- I have no idea what the title ‘Tell No Lies’ refers to. You’re on your own there.

QUILOMBO EM PASADENA, ROCKY REGGAE IN DOWNTOWN L.A.

Sometimes music genres and sub-genres emerge and disappear largely on the basis of the fame of its one or two chief protagonists. If he or they fade away, the genre they largely created doesn’t always survive. ‘Grunge’ is maybe the best example of this. After Kurt Cobain self-destructed, there didn’t seem to be much left to say, nor much of anyone left to say it. Cobain didn’t create the genre, but he certainly defined it. Eddie Vedder was not even a Pac NW’er by origin, and others had their own drug problems, so the genre was without a spiritual leader. Heroin certainly wasn’t cool any more, and after the success of the well-scrubbed Spice Girls, it seemed like a good time to kick out the jams with cute little boy bands. I gave up on reggae for the same reason years ago. Without Bob Marley, and then runner-up Peter Tosh, I figured that was that. Without Bob’s lyrics and leadership, there didn’t seem to be much left but empty baggage and an empire to be divided up amongst the sons, the musical fruit, so to speak. I always liked the island theme, and reggae was the perfectly focused complement to Jimmy Buffett’s all-you-can-eat island style, but after Marley it seemed there was just Rasta, no more reggae.

Somehow it survived all these years, so I’ve been giving it another listen lately. What with all the Marley brothers collectively carrying on Dad’s tradition in good form, and Ziggy acquiring some seniority and well-earned moral leadership (even if Daddy penned half his live set), it seemed worth a try. But what really inspires me is some of the Afro-pop artists, particularly Oliver Mtukudzi, doing a fine job of picking up the original musical spirit of reggae BUT WITHOUT ALL THE RASTA STUFF (if you overstand what I mean). So it was with high hopes that I ventured out to Grand Performances last Friday noon to catch Rocky Dawuni’s act, the so-called ‘Bob Marley of Ghana,’ though I really wasn’t very familiar with his work. My standards for acceptance are not that high really. I’ve even gotten used to the red-gold-and-green chrocheted turbans that hide more hair than a Sikh cabbie in NYC. Just don’t give some some strutting peacock with flying locks spreading pheromones and more dread than his half-baked lyrics. Unfortunately Rocky seemed all that and more, apparently lots of baggage but not much inside, all style and no substance. I left early. If there’s anything worse than a woman trying to pass off her good looks as good music, it’s a man doing the same. Fortunately in the spirit of fairness I decided to check out his MySpace site before completing this paragraph. It’s a good thing. ‘In Ghana’ is a first-rate song and some of the others aren’t bad either. Too bad Obama didn’t use it last week in Accra. This is a warning, Dawuni- tone down the strut (and please don’t name your next album ‘Lion of Zion’- please?). You’ve been warned. Some of us are neither stoned nor hormoned.

“VIVER BRASIL” is something else, though, no substance abuse here. I caught this as a freebie at Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena, though I’m sure it’d be well worth the full fare for the full bill at any of the venues they’ve played over the years around LA while honing the act. Though ‘Ballet Folclorico’ is not a new concept and similar productions have been done based on the traditions of a number of countries around the world, the results are mixed. Such things can be truly inspiring or horribly hokey. Fortunately ‘Viver Brasil’ falls into the former category. The show is essentially the interaction between music and dance, a la Brasileira, the dancers all female and all local, the musicians all males and Brazilian, headed up by co-founder Luiz Badaro’. The themes, for both dance and music, are based on the cultural milieu of Salvador de Bahia, which is to say Afro-Brazilian, colorful and throbbing. The costumes alone are worth the price of admission.

A special treat is the inclusion of native carioca (that means from Rio, not a tribe of voice-over lounge singers) Katia Moraes of LA’s Sambaguru handling vocal chores for the show. This is an excellent place for her to stretch beyond her more typical smooth samba/bossa nova style into something deeper and more aggressive and more tribal. She’s excellent at it of course. The show’s only hokey moments came during the mock-capoeira dance (though real capoeira is not much different), as the two ‘combatants’ competed for applause. That’s okay; chalk it up to the reality TV influence. Capoeira is in its element on the dance floor regardless. I can’t imagine walking through a Sao Paulo slum and every time a fight breaks out the choreography begins. West Side Story would be proud.

I also caught a piece of David Zasloff’s band Thursday night while shopping at the Farmer’s Market and was pleasantly surprised. They rocked, though I’d have probably been at McArthur Park to hear Lili Haydn if I’d known about it. It’s not often you get to hear someone who’s been called the ‘female Jimi Hendrix of the electric violin,’ but they apparently only got their 2009 schedule up on the web within the last week or so. Oh well, maybe they’ll get their act together one day, probably the day of deadline. There’s so much good music in summer in LA, if you snooze you’ll lose. I’d like to be covering San Diego and TJ also, and could too, but LA’s got so much already that it’s hard to get motivated to look around the edges. This week’s no different, starting off with Bobby Matos at Hollywood and Highland on Tuesday, then Malian techno-tribal singer Issa Bagayogo at the Skirball on Thursday, while the West African Highlife Band holds the stage at Levitt Pavilion in McArthur Park. Watcha Clan and Cucu Diamantes will be at Grand Performances downtown Thursday, and Albita will show up Friday. And of course it’s all free. It’s hard to beat that. El Gran Silencio will be in TJ and Amadou & Mariam will open for Coldplay at Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in San Diego. Get off the Net and out the door.

MALI’S JIHAD #4, and Counting: The Day the Music Stopped

It’s horrible, of course, the war currently going on in Mali, the desecration of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu, and the disruption of lives in a place where life doesn’t allow much margin for error.  Maybe the most ironic aspect of it all is that Mali has been able to cast itself so successfully in the last twenty years as the capital of world music, starting with Ali Farka Toure’ and including dozens of regional stars in its roll-call before making Ali’s son Vieux its latest luminary.  The griot and djeli traditions go back much farther than that, of course, which is about all that can be reliably said on the history of the subject.  Urban legends of Tuareg revolutionaries turning in their guns for guitars may be more or less accurate, if generously embellished for marketing purposes, but the claim of being able to trace American blues or jazz back to a single village in Mali is probably an over-simplification, if not necessarily false, given only anecdotal evidence and no clear genetic links.